Fast test if directory is empty

Question

What is the fastest way to test if a directory is empty?

Of course I can check the length of

list.files(path, all.files = TRUE, include.dirs = TRUE,          


        

Answer 1

How about if(length(dir(all.files=TRUE)) ==0) ?

I'm not sure what you qualify as "fast," but if dir takes a long time, someone is abusing your filesystem :-(.